


Apple Pie Life

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s12e02 Mamma Mia, Gen, Headspace, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:37:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8374135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: He eats the pie too fast, shoves it in his mouth so his face doesn’t have the chance to betray what he’s thinking. He’s gross about it like he’s a kid again, and it’s worth it for the way she looks at him, like he’s finally the Dean she remembers.





	

Dean tells Cas he’s afraid of overwhelming his mom.

It’s not a lie, exactly. It just isn’t the whole truth.

The truth is that _he’s_ overwhelmed. He’s used to not getting what he wants, to resigning himself to reality, to always having his prayers answered with a resounding _No._ He’s acclimated. Now, though? Now he has what he wanted for so many years and it’s decades too late and still somehow too soon. He’s thrilled to have Mary back at the same time he’s terrified of screwing it up, of driving her off, of pushing her away. He is here with her, in the bunker, in this place that is one of only a few that have ever felt like home, this place he knows better than America’s back roads, and yet he feels lost. It’s too much.

_I’m so damn happy,_ Dean tells her.

He waits for that to be the only thing he feels.

\--

“He was a great father,” Mary says.

Dean thinks a thousand things in the few ensuing seconds before his phone rings. He thinks of the gun his dad put in his hands before he was old enough to learn long division. He thinks of every unacknowledged birthday and holiday. He thinks of every hurt he had to take care of himself, every meal he had to make or steal for himself and Sam, thinks of so many days where they were left alone and scared and hungry, and he tries his best to smile.

He doesn’t know how to tell her he knows better than her. That he has twenty-seven years of experience of John as a father to her measly four, and that twenty-three year discrepancy makes a hell of a lot of a difference.

Later, he tells her John changed after she died. He’s softening the blow. What he really wants to say is that the John she knew died a long time ago.

The version of Mary Dean knew died a long time ago, too.

\--

He doesn’t want her to come along to find Sam.

It’s not only that he’s worried about her getting hurt or being a distraction. It’s that he was desperately hoping to be alone on the road to have some time to think. To have some time, maybe, to sort his thoughts out, and then call Cas and beg him to understand.

He knows Cas knows how important Mary is to him, that he knows how happy Dean is to have her back. But he needs him to understand the rest of it, too, needs him to know that every time Dean says _I’m happy_ it feels more and more like all the times he’s said _I’m fine._ He wants to call him up and say, I know they’re not exactly the same, but don’t you remember how long you looked for your father? Don’t you remember how disappointing it was when you finally found him? Don’t you still ache with all the things you could never figure out how to say to him?

He wants to say, I’m not just making this complicated, it _is_ complicated. He wants someone to tell him it’s okay for him to not be okay. That he’s not awful for feeling strange and unsettled and not unequivocally, irrevocably happy.

Instead, his mom is sitting shotgun and Dean is thinking, for the thousandth time that day, that he doesn’t know how to feel. That he doesn’t know what to do.

\--

Cas may not understand why Dean is so nervous about being alone with his mom, but he does understand Dean. All it takes is a look, a subtle raise of his eyebrows, and they’ve held an entire conversation. He’s relieved when Cas steps forward and makes an excuse to keep Mary from following Dean into the house. For that moment, at least, everything is easy. He feels _known._

After, though, when Sam has been rescued, Cas heals their physical wounds but everything else remains. Whatever else it is that’s wrong with Dean -- whatever it is that’s making this so difficult when all he wants is for it to be easy -- still plagues him.

Dean tries to shake off his unease as they talk of heading back to the bunker. “You gonna come with?” Dean asks, because he still can’t quite figure out how to start sentences with _I want._

“I wouldn’t want to intrude,” Cas says, and before Dean can articulate an objection, he’s getting into his stolen truck and driving away.

Dean drives home with Sam riding shotgun and his mom in the back seat and despairs.

Dinner is no different. He learns that one of the few pieces of Mary he had held onto, the food he had spent years trying without success to recreate, wasn’t even something she made. He knows it’s ridiculous to be disappointed, but he can’t help himself. He wanted it to be something they had in common. He wanted it to be one of the ways he was keeping her alive. But they don’t and it wasn’t and he doesn’t know what to do.

He doesn’t know how to handle this. He doesn’t know how to process the fact that the biggest thing he has in common with his mom is the guilt and the self-loathing that comes with knowing the suffering their choices have caused for the people they love.

It feels all wrong, knowing that. That these awful, aching, human parts of him are the things he shares with her, the points where their personalities intersect. He wanted her being back to fix everything, but it hasn’t. It won’t. She’s just a person, and he hates to think of her like that -- as _just_ anything. She can’t undo the things he’s done and the things that have happened to him, though. No matter how wonderful it is, her presence will never negate her absence.

He eats the pie too fast, shoves it in his mouth so his face doesn’t have the chance to betray what he’s thinking. He’s gross about it like he’s a kid again, and it’s worth it for the way she looks at him, like he’s finally the Dean she remembers.

He wants so badly to be what she expects, but he doesn’t know what he was like when he was just a kid, when he didn’t know the feel of bloody knuckles and broken bones, when his fear of the dark wasn’t justified by years of experience, when he wasn’t covered in scars and the grime of so many hunts that he can never quite wash it out. He doesn’t know what she expects, and he’s too afraid to ask.

\--

Dean gets just drunk enough on cheap beer and old memories that he calls Cas and asks him to come home.

“You’re not intruding,” Dean says. “You’re never intruding. You’re just as much a member of our family as my mom is. You--” He takes a deep breath, swallows hard.

“Dean?” Cas says.

Dean presses a hand to his head, presses his head back against the cabinets. “You feel like more of a member of it than she does right now, actually,” he confesses.

Cas says, without hesitation, “I’m on my way.”

\--

Dean’s head is spinning by the time Cas arrives, ushered in by the familiar sound of his footsteps on the concrete.

The first thing he does is take the half-finished beer from Dean’s hand and the empty bottles from the floor and set them by the sink, far out of reach. The second thing he does is take the photographs.

Once those are placed on the counter -- carefully, reverently, away from the danger of the sink and the stove -- he sits next to Dean on the floor. After a moment’s consideration, he picks up Dean’s hand where it rests between them, scooting closer until they’re pressed together from their shoulders to their feet. He twines their fingers together loosely and gently draws shapes on Dean’s skin with his free hand. Something about it makes Dean’s chest ache and his eyes sting.

He closes his eyes. “Thanks for coming,” he says quietly, voice thick.

“Of course,” Cas says.

They sit together in the silence of the kitchen until Cas finally speaks again, voice low and soft. “Earlier,” he says, “when I was waiting outside with your mother. She tried everything she could to get me to let her follow you into that house.” He pauses, then, and Dean can feel Cas’ eyes on the side of his face. He doesn’t say anything -- probably couldn’t, even if he wanted to -- and Cas takes that as the permission it is to continue. “She told me it was obvious I cared about you and Sam. She asked me if I wouldn’t do anything for you that was within my power. I told her I would, and she asked what I would do to anyone who stood in my way. So I let her go.” He stops moving his fingers against Dean’s skin, switching to hold Dean’s hand between his palms instead. “She cares about you,” Cas says. “One day, she’ll know you, too.”

Dean leans his head against Cas’ shoulder and breathes.

“Okay,” he says, and does his best to believe it will be.


End file.
